


devastate me

by dizzyondreams



Series: friends with benefits au [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 23:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4806422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzyondreams/pseuds/dizzyondreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weeks passed into months and Jean became a semi-permanent figure in Eren’s life. </p><p>---</p><p>Prequel to my fic <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1557008">that golden rule</a>, showing how Jean and Eren met and how their relationship changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	devastate me

**Author's Note:**

> no need to have read 'that golden rule' prior to reading this, obviously, since it's a prequel!

Before Eren knew Jean, he knew Connie and Sasha. 

They lived a street away from him, in a building that Eren could only describe as condemned, or near it. They grew weed in the attic, and slept together on a fold out couch in a slightly mouldy living room. He could always hear their music from four or five houses away.

Basically, they were the worst neighbours but the best kind of weed dealer. Dealers. Whatever, they were so symbiotic they were practically the same person. Connie&Sasha. Sunbathing in their front garden with a brazen joint, some weird trance music playing from the open front room window. This was how Eren met them. 

“Hey.” He called, resting his forearms on the chest high wall that came between them and the street. Sasha had pushed her sunglasses up and gave him a wide, silly grin. She had a tattoo of a sun around her navel, and Eren noted that it matched the one blooming on Connie’s sternum. He grinned slowly.

“You looking to buy?” Sasha had asked, and Eren felt his grin widen.

Two months later, and Eren was a near constant presence in their house, lured by cheap drugs and the absolute need to improve their music taste. 

“Listen, I’ve got some Floyd here,” He called as he let himself into their house through the always-open back door. “You guys’re gonna l-” He stopped in the doorway to the kitchen, and pointed at the guy sitting at the table with the CD in his hand. “You’re not Connie and Sasha.”

“Nope.” He muttered, spooning cereal into his mouth and chewing slowly. He looked like he’d just woken up, hair sticking up all over the place, pillow creases on one pink cheek, wearing a pair of boxers that Eren was 99% sure were Connie’s.

Eren looked at the boxers, back up the mystery guy’s face. He squinted suspiciously. Mystery guy just ate another spoonful of cereal, eyes fixed on Eren.

“Did you fuck Connie?” Eren asked finally, raising the Dark Side of the Moon for another accusatory point. Mystery guy scoffed at him and didn’t reply.

Eren, with nothing else to do, took a seat opposite the guy. Poured himself a bowl of cereal.

“What’s your name?” He asked after a minute of silence interrupted only by chewing. The guy didn’t seem to be very much of a morning person, judging by the way he was sitting there staring at the wall like he was about to knock out straight into his bowl of cereal. 

“Jean.” He replied, voice a little scratchy from sleep. He had a bit of stubble going on, and his hair followed a slight wave that had it flicking out from his head from how he’d slept. Pretty cute for a white guy, anyway. 

“I’m Eren,” he replied, even though Jean hadn’t asked for his name and frankly didn’t seem to care. 

“I didn’t fuck Connie, by the way.” Jean muttered a few minutes later, standing to put his bowl in the sink. He was taller than Eren had thought, and his legs were skinny, hairy and blindingly pale. Eren felt an odd little spark of attraction in his gut. Maybe it was those cheekbones. “They’ve gone to see Sasha’s mum’s for the weekend.” He continued, unaware of Eren’s ogling. “I’m housesitting.” He paused, leaned against the kitchen sink and made a considering noise. “Or maybe weed-sitting is the right word.”

Eren regarded him with a half-smile and slid the CD he’d left on the table forward. “What’s your opinion on Floyd?” He asked, and Jean grinned back.

\----------

Weeks passed into months and Jean became a semi-permanent figure in Eren’s life. Pretty much only whenever he hung out with Sasha and Connie, but they ran into each other in clubs and bars a lot since they lived in the same area and had the same friends. They bickered a lot, over music, films, whether you put water in the mug before the tea bag or vice versa. Normal stuff. Eren flung a plate at Jean’s head once after a heated debate over which Star Wars films were best (Eren advocated for the originals, but Jean was a dirty prequel apologist) and only missed by the grace of God and the fact that he’d swallowed a tab of acid shortly before the incident. Jean had laughed until he was red in the face, and had fallen asleep later on with his face pressed against Eren’s shoulder. Connie and Sasha were still finding slivers of china in their sofa bed.

Eren kissed him once, a snap decision based on lust and the way Jean looked half lit in the glow of his cigarette. Eren had been too drunk for it to have a real imprint on him, but he remembered he liked the way Jean’s hands felt on his waist, the way his stubble scratched over his chin.

He’d breathed, “We should do this more,” when they parted, and Jean had tilted his head to the side and lost his balance, braced himself against the wall. “Don’t you think?”

“What like, a sex thing?” He’d asked, and Eren remembered the flash of his teeth in the low light when Eren had shrugged and swayed into him, clutched at the front of his shirt. “Sure.”

Eren woke up the next morning with a throbbing headache in a bed he didn’t recognise. It wasn’t his own, and it wasn’t Armin’s or Mikasa’s beds or Sasha&Connie’s lumpy sofa bed. He cracked an eye open against the blinding daylight and shut it again when he saw a familiar pair of broad shoulders, that sleep-mussed dirty blond hair. He did a sluggish inventory of himself as he tugged the duvet higher around him, very aware of his bare chest and the fact that he was bare chested in _Jean’s_ bed, apparently.

He was still wearing his boxers, so he took that as a good sign. Slowly, without moving the covers around too much, Eren propped himself up on his elbow to scan the room for his clothes. His head spun, and he gritted his teeth and pressed the heel of his hand to his eye until the room stopped tilting. 

The night came back to him in snapshots as he tried to still his rolling stomach. Going out with Armin and Mikasa, bumping into Jean, Connie and Sasha and a few people Eren didn’t recognise. Drinking, so much drinking. Jean throwing his head back, laughing. Leaning into Jean in an alley behind the club, the expensive smell of his cologne in Eren’s nose and his voice, whiskey rough, murmuring, _’What, like, a sex thing?’_

Eren groaned and pressed his face into the pillow. Unhelpfully, it smelt just like Jean did last night, and lit an unbidden spark somewhere in his stomach. _Like, a sex thing?_ He flopped onto his back and threw an arm over his face, breathed out heavily. Fuck yeah, like a sex thing.

Jean made a sleepy noise next to him and rolled over onto Eren’s side of the bed with a grunt. Eren watched as he blinked, eyelids heavy, before he groaned and pressed his hand to his face.

“I feel that, dude.” Eren muttered.

Jean opened his eyes fully at the sound of Eren’s voice, and they stared at each other in dumb silence for a minute until Jean closed his eyes again and made a pathetic noise. Eren could really sympathise. 

“Good morning.” Jean said eventually, exhaling loudly. 

“Did we-” Eren began, and Jean cut him off with an emphatic “ _No_.”

They stared at each other in silence for another long minute, and then Jean sighed and rolled onto his back. “No, you were so fucking drunk, you just stripped off and I made you go to sleep. Nothing happened.”

“Okay.” Eren said, then, “Thanks?”

Jean just grunted and rolled out of bed to go get some water. Eren watched him go, and thought again, _sex thing_. A tiny spark of arousal went through him despite his headache.

Jean got back into bed when he returned, fixed Eren with a look that was half-searching half just completely hungover. Eren steeled himself.

“Do you remember what we...talked about, last night?” He said in a rush, because it had been burning in the back of his mind since he’d woken up.

Jean’s face suddenly relaxed into that smirk that Eren knew too well. “Yeah.” He said, “I wasn’t as drunk as you.”

“Do you...still wanna?”

Jean grinned, eyes crinkling. “Fuck, yeah I do.” 

\--------

The two of them fell into a comfortable sort of relationship. Eren didn’t want to label it, they’d both made it clear it was strictly sex. More often than not they’d stumble home from a bar together and go back to Jean’s bed, or Eren’s when Armin and Mikasa weren’t around to hear them. It was a boredom thing, a convenience thing, just a _sex thing_. No strings attached, and Eren could fuck Jean whenever he wanted and still antagonise him whenever they ended up at Sasha and Connie’s at the same time. 

It was around November when it stopped becoming such a great thing. 

Eren spent the whole morning and a sizeable chunk of the afternoon bundled up in Jean’s bed against the cold. Jean couldn’t afford to pay the gas bill that month, so the flat was so cold that Eren couldn’t even entertain the idea of leaving the bed. Jean had braved it twice, once for coffee, a second time to answer the door to someone. He returned with cold feet and an armful of pizza, which Eren made grabby hands at until Jean passed the box to him.

“I was thinking we could’ve gone out for food tonight.” Eren mused later, after the pizza had been eaten and he was lying with his head on Jean’s chest, eyes drooping with tiredness and the remnants of his wine hangover from the previous night. “But this is still good.” He gestured expansively, meaning the Game of Thrones reruns they’d caught, the warmth of a shared bed, the way Jean’s arm was curled around his shoulders, his free hand playing idly with Eren’s fingers.

“What,” Jean scoffed, hand freezing over Eren’s. “Like a date?”

Eren considered him for a second, how the two of them had been seeing more and more of each other as weeks went by. It didn’t take a chance encounter at Sasha&Connie’s or a bar for it either. Eren had been sleeping in Jean’s bed more than his own recently, his toothbrush shared the holder with Jean’s in the bathroom. Eren even had a couple pairs of underwear in Jean’s drawers. Jean had an emoji heart next to his name in Eren’s phone, and on late nights they wouldn’t even fuck before curling up to sleep. 

Eren’s heart was beating double time in his chest.

“I mean,” Eren said, trying to sound casual. “We’re kinda dating already, huh?” He tried to play it off jokingly, because it was obvious to anyone that him and Jean had been straying into ‘real couple’ territory for a while now. Eren hadn’t slept with anyone else since August. He knew how Jean liked his coffee.

Jean’s reaction was immediate and close to something like panic.

“Uh, I gotta shower.” He blurted, despite the fact that it was nine o’clock at night and that he’d been fine lying around unshowered all day. He sat up straight, and Eren flopped back onto the pillows with a huff as he watched Jean got out of bed and began fumbling for clothes. 

 

“Did I freak you out?” He asked lazily, and Jean stopped in his tracks and glared.

“No you didn’t _’freak me out’_.” He threw the t-shirt in his hands over the end of the bed and crossed his arms. “I just don’t want you getting all,” He made a frustrated noise and gestured in a way which was supposed to illustrate his point, apparently. “About this being anything more than casual.”

Eren regarded him silently for a second, then said, “So, I did freak you out.”

Jean made a strangled noise of frustration and stomped out of the room. Eren stared at the ceiling, trying to put a name to the feeling in his chest. After a fruitless minute he gave up and began searching for his clothes.

“I’m leaving!” He yelled in the direction of the bathroom, and when Jean didn’t reply he just rolled his eyes and left.

Twenty minutes later he was down £10 but significantly higher than he’d been previously. Connie was sitting in his lap, and Sasha was in the kitchen, fixing him one of her famous condolence hot chocolates. The room smelt of cinnamon and weed and Eren felt himself relaxing in increments into the sofa. 

“I mean, it’s not just me, right?” Eren groaned, tipping his head back against the wall. Connie patted his cheek reassuringly and shook his head.

“No way, dude. You and Jean are like,” He wrinkled up his nose. “ _Gross_.” At Eren’s raised eyebrows he scrambled, “Cute gross, dude. Like, ‘just get a house and a Honda together already’ gross.”

“Okay, I’m gonna ignore the fact that you think I’d ever _entertain_ buying a Honda,” Eren said, “But it’s pretty obvious that Jean’s not… _aware_ , or he’s ignoring it, or maybe he’s just like, super handsy with every other fuckbuddy he’s got.” 

“Nah, he’s just got commitment issues on top of commitment issues.” Sasha said, coming into the room slowly, a huge mug of hot chocolate threatening to overspill in her hands. She handed it to Eren carefully before curling up on the couch next to him. Connie stretched his legs into her lap, and Eren felt his heart squeeze at the comfortable and familiar touches between them. 

“Not to mention he’s so deep in denial he’s practically evolved gills.” Connie noted, stealing a marshmallow off the top of Eren’s hot chocolate and popping it into his mouth. “If there’s something happening to him he isn’t comfy with, he will straight ignore it until it either goes away or resolves itself.”

“Believe me, we’ve known him ages.” Sasha added, picking the still-burning joint out of the ashtray and blowing on it cursorily. “You can’t even imagine the amount of tear jags we had to sit through when he started realising he was bi after ignoring it for like, ten years.”

Despite himself, Eren laughed. Connie and Sasha were almost professionals at cheering people up, but the reason why he’d shown up on their doorstep still nagged at the back of his mind. The past few months with Jean had been great, but as Eren had started to know him past nights out or spent at Connie and Sasha’s their casual relationship had deepened into something that Eren hadn’t been expecting. He knew what Jean looked like after he’d just woken up, knew all the pressure points to hit for an argument, knew a thousand and one things about Jean that he’d never even entertained wanting to know. Eren wanted to know more, wanted to sleep next to him without a ton of alcohol in his system clouding their inhibitions. They’d fallen in together out of lust and mutual interest, but now Jean was becoming very _real_ to Eren, not just a hot kinda wanky guy who looked good with sex-messed hair. 

“He told me the other day that he needed to ‘find me a boyfriend’,” Eren mumbled, curling an arm around Connie’s waist as he sipped at his hot chocolate. Sasha made a sympathetic sound.

“Wanna hit?” She said, offering him the joint. Eren just rolled his eyes.

\------

Eren avoided Jean for the rest of the week in some stupid, misguided attempt at getting his emotions under control by getting some distance. It didn’t work. He was just now thinking about Jean while trying to spend some time with his friends.

Predictably, he ran into Jean not four days into his attempt. Even more predictably, they caught a taxi back to Jean’s place around twelve, where they preceded to make out against Jean’s locked front door for like, five minutes. Ten tops.

Jean tasted like blood after being knocked to the floor by some guy who’s beer he’d spilt, the taste of iron so overwhelming that Eren had to pull away and gasp, “You really need some ice on that.”

Jean thunked his head back against the door, grabbed at Eren’s ass in an ineffectual attempt to grind up against him (which Eren resisted on the principle that he could only swallow so much of Jean’s blood, gross), then swore and unlocked his front door.

“Y’know,” Jean said, kicking off his shoes in the hall and turning off into the bathroom. “I have never been with someone so adept at ruining the moment.”

“I’m _blushing_.” Eren half drawled, half slurred, bending down to check out the freezer for anything Jean could put on his jaw. 

“I could’ve taken him.” Jean announced tangentially in the way which only the drunk can as he came into the kitchen, face and mouth substantially less bloody. 

“Guy was built like a brick shithouse.” Eren muttered, holding up a bag of frozen peas. “C’mere, tough guy. I’ll jump in for you next time.”

“I don’t need you to do that.” Jean said haughtily, leaning up against the counter and taking the peas off Eren to press to his mouth. 

“You severely underestimate your ability to kick ass, take names, etc.” Eren poured himself a glass of water, gulped it down, turned to Jean. “You reckon there’s anything weird playing on Sci-Fi right now?”

There wasn’t anything good on, but they stayed on the couch even after Jean had muted the TV and pulled Eren against his chest.

“We could get back to making out, I guess.” Eren suggested, not feeling very much like it. He could hear the steady beat of Jean’s heart in his ear, and the sound (and the alcohol) was lulling him closer and closer to sleep.

Jean made a noise, flapped his hand before dropping it to the nape of Eren’s neck. “Tired.” He said, and Eren shivered as Jean scratched at the over-long hair on the back of his head. The sort of touch that Jean always insisted was ‘fixing your goddamn birds nest of hair’, the one that made Eren drowsy and content.

His throat felt packed with unsaid words, almost-accusations and confessions that would never see the light of day. He swallowed, trying to dislodge them, told himself to enjoy what he had and to give up that impulse to _push_ all the damn time. 

He burrowed his face into the space between Jean’s shoulder and throat, breathed in the smell of stupid expensive cologne. “Jean?” He murmured, eyes shut, heart thrumming with anticipation. Jean hummed in response, sounding halfway to sleep as well. Seconds dragged past as Eren tried to verbalise what he needed to, as he simultaneously tried to _stop_ himself. “Maybe we should go to bed.” Was all he said eventually, and let himself be dragged along to bed in the drowsy and slightly disappointed haze he found himself in.

Jean fell asleep with his chest pressed to Eren’s back, his hand curled almost protectively across Eren’s chest.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! this was for a commission, + even tho i'm not really a sequel/prequel kinda guy, i think this turned out pretty true to the au :^)
> 
> \+ thanks to ana for going all daily bugle editor on this, what would i do w/o ur ruthlessness 
> 
> title from hurricane by halsey. i listened to a ton of badlands while writing this??
> 
> oh and commissions are still open over on my tumblr (my url is girlshinji)


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